VANCOUVER: In 2007 the Campbell government re-instated gold-plated pensions for MLAs – the first government in Canada to do so. But they went one step further and gave current and former MLAs the opportunity to “buy back” gold-plated pension benefits.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has learned that part of the taxpayer portion of the buyback bill for the period 1996 to 2007 is coming in at a whopping $16.4 million.
"In 1996, at urging of the CTF, the Harcourt government sensibly appointed a Citizens’ Panel and adopted a recommendation to provide MLAs a matching RRSP-type pension plan whereby taxpayers would contribute one dollar for every dollar contributed by an MLA. In opposition at the time, Gordon Campbell suggested the pension reforms could have been even more stringent,” said Maureen Bader, B.C. Director of the CTF. "However, after a few years in office the Campbell government brought back gold-plated pensions and made them available to all the politicians that lost out in the interim. Now taxpayers are finding out what the cost of that decision will be.”
A current or former MLA may buy back his or her pension by July 1, 2011 at a cost determined by the public service board on the basis of the full actuarial cost of the pension benefit. For the period from May 17, 2005, to March 31, 2007, the actuarial cost of the buyback is shared 50/50 between the member and the taxpayer. However, for the period 1996 to 2005, the MLA pays only 11 per cent of his or her salary and the taxpayer picks up 89 per cent of the actuarial cost of the remainder, no matter what that amounts to.
The CTF is awaiting a request of the names of which current and former MLAs have bought back into the gold-plated scheme, but has already been denied information on how much these former and current MLAs themselves paid. The CTF has said it will undertake to provide estimated pension benefits of these current and former MLAs under the new pension arrangements should names be forthcoming from the government. In 2007 the CTF did a study on the current pension plan showing that for every dollar contributed by an MLA to the pension plan, taxpayers contributed four dollars.
